One of the best S Pen friendly apps for your photos is Touch Retouch, which lets you make minor cosmetic upgrades to your pictures using the stylus. Got a spot in that otherwise flattering party pic?

No problem, zap it with the S Pen and you’re back to looking your best. Annoying tourist in the background of your Empire State Building snap? A quick cut and retouch later and you’re back in business.

Photo Note

Back in the days of physical photographs, your mum (or nan) would scribble a little reminder on the back of where and when it was taken and – in the case of baby photos – who it’s of.

Why should it be any different with digital photos? Using the Samsung GALAXY Note II’s S Pen and Samsung’s own Photo Note feature, you can jot digital notes on the virtual reverse of each shot and then share them to friends and family using ChatOn IM, MMS or email.

Snapseed really is the cream of the mobile photo editing crop. It’s easy to use, and lets you apply a whole host of effects that it would take a lot of know-how to do in traditional apps like Photoshop.

Adding retro effects, textures and frames to images is even easier than ever before on the Note II’s wonderfully spacious screen.

Sometimes one photo just isn’t enough – enter Photogrid, which lets you make collages of multiple shots and arranges them in natty ways. The Note II’s screen is pin-sharp and brilliant for giving a life-sized overview of your collage.

We particularly love shaking the handset to rearrange your chosen pics, while the S Pen comes in really handy for accurately positioning extras like text.

More of a straightforward selection process than some of the more powerful apps we’ve mentioned, but Pixl-r-omatic can let you do some quite spectacular things to your pictures with minimal effort.

The myriad options are easy to flick through thanks to the Note II’s expansive screen and with various lighting options coupled with already great image quality; no one will believe your photos came from your phone.

Another user-friendly effects app, FX Camera gives you an abundance of filter options and includes ace additions like the Fisheye effect which gives all of your photos an instant veneer of ‘70s skater cool.

To completely re-work photos, go for the Symmetric effect which gives an excellent kaleidoscopic look to jazz up even the most boring of pictures.

It’d be remiss of us not to point you in the direction of Instagram, the retro effect friendly photo-sharing social network. Although it doesn’t come with any Note II specific features, it’s still the easiest filter-adding app and the best for quickly sharing photos with your friends.

Adobe’s Photoshop Express on the GALAXY Note II is a superb (and free) cut-down version of Photoshop for your smartphone – which lets you crop and tweak brightness and saturation on your pics quickly, easily and with the absolute minimum amount of fuss.